


To ________, I  Love You

by Fangirlingmanaged



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I love these boys okay, M/M, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve is basically Tony's Peter Kavinsky, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony is soft, Work In Progress, because I said so, because he deserves a Peter Kavinsky, more or less
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-04 20:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15848556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirlingmanaged/pseuds/Fangirlingmanaged
Summary: The To All the Boys I've Loved Before AU I couldn't get out of my head.Starring:Tony as Lara Jean.Steve as Peter Kavinsky.An assortment of very attractive boys who all care for Tony very much.And one very determined bot, trying his best.





	1. Introductions- Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ that one Tumblr post ](http://summerpipedream.tumblr.com/post/177507882119/consider-in-the-style-of-to-all-the-boys-ive)about DUM-E finding Tony's letters and sending them to the boys.

Tony has always been too shy for his own good. Up until around ten years old, he didn’t really notice seeing as the only people he usually interacted with were his parents, Jawwis and Ana, or Jan when she was allowed to visit the mansion during vacations. Oh! And his bots. But Jawwis had said that they really didn’t count because, well, they couldn’t really answer him back even if they understood everything he said and he talked to them constantly as he practiced his multiplication tables and wrote his… well,  _ stories _ , but Dad wasn’t allowed to know about those. 

So, yes, he didn’t really have much experience talking to other people and  _ especially _ people his age. Every time he was forced to attend galas, it was mostly adults, and the other kids tended to avoid him. Since most of them were assholes anyway, and especially those who followed Justin around, he had kept his distance from them too. Jan was there,  _ always _ , when he needed her but he had figured a long time ago that Jan was special. She was…  _ unique _ is what Jawwis called her, always with a smile. 

Tony figured he was gay when he was ten years old and a new kid found his way onto his social circle. His name was Stephen Strange, and like his name, he was pretty unusual when it came to the type of boy who would be at such functions. His parents had moved the entire family over to Los Angeles from London, from what Tony understood, and that’s why Tony had never seen him before. His father was a world-renowned surgeon, apparently, and his mother was some sort of musical prodigy. Tony hadn’t been all sure of the details, what he  _ had _ known, however, was that he was the prettiest person after Ana and his Mama he had ever seen. 

“Tony, what do you think of--Tony?” Jan had been talking to him about one of her designs. They were squeezed into the loveseat in the library of some big mansion. Tony had no idea what the function had been about this time, only that it had been a family affair, and he had gone to find Jan as soon as he could get away from his parents. Sometimes Tony felt guilty about commandeering all of Jan’s time since he knew she would be off with the girls if he wasn’t there, but he couldn’t help but be incredibly grateful that she was his friend. “Oh!” 

Tony snapped his gaze away from the strange boy across the library. Justin was standing in front of him, red in the face, as the boy continued to read through a thick tome he had spread across his knees. That’s what had grabbed Tony’s attention away from the schematics on his tablet in the first place; he’d hunched into himself, out of habit, as soon as Justin and his goons had come into the room. They had invited the Strange kid out for some sort of activity or another, but the kid had declined. Never one to accept a no, Justin began posturing, which was when the other kid had said a few words that Tony couldn’t hear but he could tell from the goons’ body language must have been pretty awesome, before returning his gaze to the anatomy book in front of him. 

“His name is Stephen,” Jan said conspiratorially. Tony had snapped his gaze up to her before looking down, blushing furiously. He mumbled something about not knowing what to say, but Jan just smiled. “He just moved here from London. He’s studying at the academy.”

“Oh,” was all Tony could think of saying. Before he could ask Jan any more questions, because she was one of the only people who never got annoyed with him for asking them, the other boy looked up as though he could hear their conversation. Tony’s eyes met his and Stephen gave him a half-smile and a wave. Tony could feel his cheeks flaring red as he looked down at his schematics quickly; Jan, the traitor, chuckled next to him. 

Tony wouldn’t see Stephen until many years later as the boy didn’t show up to any of the other functions and the Starks moved away to their New York estate two years later. That night, however, after gathering information from Jan, Tony wrote Stephen a letter. 

  
  


The next time Tony had that same fluttery feeling in his chest, he was a little older and had been thrust into a terrible human creation: junior high. When they had moved to New York, Maria had gotten it into her head that Tony needed to have new, more mundane experiences. She’d argued with Howard for months until the man finally relented, if only to avoid another argument with his wife seeing as they already had so many to begin with, and thus Tony had been sent to what his father referred to as “moron school.”

To say Tony had been excited would be an overstatement, though his mother had loved to repeat the same thing over and over again, but  _ had  _ been cautiously optimistic. That optimism was gone three days into the year when a kid named Brock and his asshole friends had tripped him up in the hallway in front of everyone and had sent his sketches of DUM-E’s updates scattering all over the place. 

He’d been trying to gather all his papers, blinking his eyes furiously to not cry and humiliate himself further, when someone had crouched down in front of him. He’d looked up and his mouth had dropped open. In front of him was one of the most wonderful boys Tony had ever seen. Dark skin, the prettiest set of brown eyes Tony had ever seen and a smile with a killer pair of dimples. Tony couldn’t have stopped staring if he tried, and he  _ did _ , but  _ wow.  _

“Here, i think i got everything,” the boy says, flashing those killers again. Tony tried to say something back, but his brain seemed to be going through a reboot and he couldn’t speed up the process. “Um, new kid? You all right? They didn’t hit you on the head or anything right?” One of the boy’s hands went up and pushed Tony’s hair away from his forehead, and then he was placing his palm there the way Ana and Jawwis usually did when he was sick. A noise like a squeak left Tony’s throat and he felt as though his whole face would burst into flames. “Sorry, sorry,” the boy said with a sheepish grin as he pulled back. Tony made another squeak. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, kid.”

“Tony,” he managed to get out and mustered a smile for the other boy. “M’name’s Tony.”

“Oh, yeah, hey! I’m James. James Rhodes,” the boy said as he got up to his feet and offered Tony a hand. The young genius had to take a moment, right there, to commit the image to memory. Rhodes standing in the middle of the hallway with his hand extended, and the sun behind him. Belatedly, not until James had started frowning, Tony grabbed his hand and allowed him to pull him up. “Hey, you wanna have lunch with me today?” James asked him with another smile. 

Tony barely managed to give him a nod, and then the boy was clapping him on the shoulder and walking away. Little did the genius know that, just like that, he had found his best friend. That very day, Tony had his first lunch with Rhodes. A week later Rhodes had become James had become Rhodey. As time went on, Rhodey had become less of a crush and more of a brother. Tony still thought he was very,  _ very _ pretty, but now it was different. Rhodey was the person who protected him in school, IM’d him when they weren’t there, and listened to Tony complain when something wasn’t going right. Rhodey was like Jan, but not really, and Tony loved him. 

That first day, though, Tony went home and wrote James a letter. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> but wait... there's more!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are some key differences with the movie, just bear with me :D

After that, Tony was way too busy thinking about school and his new projects (after DUM-E came YOU then came Butterfingers, and currently there was something else he wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out,) and by the time he had noticed, middle school was over and he found himself being dragged by Rhodey and their new best friend Pepper off to the first high school party of their life. Though Tony had had trouble opening up to people, eighth grade had found him coming out of his shell a little more. He was still very distrustful of people, it had not only been Justin at the galas but then came Brock and Aldrich and Ivan and Sunset and well… once burned, as the saying goes. Though he still tried, even more so when Natasha and then the twins had been forced to attend the galas along with him. Though at the beginning Natasha had been distant and out right confrontational towards him, he thinks they had finally managed to find some common ground with each other.

At thirteen, Tony had been forced away for the summer. Some kind of “socialization” experiment his step-mother had conjured up so he could ‘stop being such a recluse, Howard, he doesn’t have any friends.’ Ha! Joke’s on here because after Rhodey had come Pepper and then Bruce and though they _technically_ were still losers, except Pep because she was a _queen_ okay, they were still his best friends. Anyways, that summer was impressed in Tony’s memory forever for two very pivotal reasons.

The first, and in the grand scheme of things it might seem trivial but it wasn’t really, not for a boy like him: Peter Quill.

He was… Peter was _starlight._ Peter was bright and shining and so damn cute. Even with the patchy little beard he was trying to get, _and_ peter was _older_ and Tony… well. Tony was thirteen and too shy to say hi until Peter’s friends pushed him his way and they spent every day of the rest of that summer at the dock or in their cabins or huddled up in the activity room with Peter’s contraband Walkman listening to Zeppelin and AC/DC and Def Leppard and though Peter liked crappy disco music Tony’s heart still felt as though it would burst out of his chest every time they were together.

And when they went home, on the last day of camp as Tony waited for Jawwis to come pick him up because he knew his dad would forget, Peter gave Tony a little pendant and his very first kiss. And yeah, Rhodey and Pepper said it didn’t count, but Bruce was the smartest of them all and he said that cheek kisses still counted so _there_.

Peter wrote Tony letters for all of three months. In the end, they started getting shorter and shorter, and he wouldn’t call as much. Natasha, now more comfortable around him, asked him if he needed her to kick anyone’s butt for making him sad. Well, sadder, but he just shook his head and asked her if she was all ready for her new posh school. And then she was off talking about ballet and poses and her teacher and his sadness was all forgotten. The twins were still too littler to really notice, though he noticed Peter Parker headbutted him with more delight and he was about seventy-three percent sure that Harley’s slap had been meant with love that one time.

Tony wrote Peter one last letter he never sent, anyway. It was saved along with all the others.

 

 

Though Tony wasn’t able to dwell on his heartbreak for too long, after that. For in December of that year, Howard and Susan Stark were killed in a fatal car crash. Rumor had it, though Tony was never able to see the forensics report, that Mr. Stark had been under the influence. The next few months after that were a blur of anger and confusion and _fear_ for Tony. For a while, it was unclear whether or not Tony would be able to stay with his siblings. For one, they were technically only half siblings, and secondly… well, there was really nobody to take them in. Susan’s family had cut ties with her when Natasha had been born, Tony was almost two at the time and his mother was still alive; her only connection had been Howard and even that had dwindled for a few years after Maria’s death before they finally decided to get together again. Though Tony hated his father, for hurting his mother and lying so many years, he had taken an immediate shine to Natasha. She’d been a chubby toddler and her big green eyes had got him hook, line, and sinker from the moment he met her. Fast forward a few years, and Susan had given him twin brothers too.

So although a part of him, the one that had always and would always love Maria with a fierce protectiveness, he mourned for them both when they passed.

It was a rough year on all of them. Though Howard’s will came to ease a lot of the burden, and his wealth even more so, Jawwis and Ana still had to fight tooth and nail with every goddamn organization to keep them together. In the end, it worked out for the better, but Tony is ashamed to say he didn’t make it any easier on his adoptive parents. Though they were roughly the same age, they were a year and some months apart, Natasha had taken their loss better than he had.

For the next two or three years, Tony had been… well, a mess. He’d started blowing his classes, and his friends, and once at a party he’d met up with Aldrich and Maya. They’d been dating at the time and _heavy_ on some new synthetic drug shit. He got hooked, and for a couple years it had been the hardest thing to try to stop. It had taken Peter, barely three years old at the time, petting his hair one morning while Harley read him from one of his books for him to finally stop. They’d been crying, these awful hiccupping sounds, as they had been the first ones to find him when they had come into his room for some cuddles.

Before that, however, there had been James. James Buchanan Barnes with the long hair and the cool prosthetic and the dark, dark brown eyes that saw all your secrets but gave away none. There was James, who had never been attractive before then even though Tony had known him most of his life. Bucky, as his friends called him and _man_ was Tony lucky to be able to do so, who carried Tony out of a party bridal style because Maya and Aldrich had left him to choke on his own puke after giving him some new shit he never should have tried. There was Bucky who took solo cups away from Tony when he happened to catch him at a party or guided him home when things got to be too much.

Bucky who was dating Natasha.

Now it was Bucky, Tony and Natasha. Tony went to sleep earlier these days, or cuddled up to the twins and played video games though they swore they were too old, gross Bambino, they were all of _seven_ okay, stop, while they stayed in the den and cuddled and kissed and probably made out even though Tony was _not_ thinking about it. And when they were in school, because Natasha had dropped out of expensive ballet school after their parents passed away, tony sat on the side instead of the middle. And even though it was more awkward than before, they still watched movie together and went to amusement parks and bowling alleys and record stores together. It was fine, really, and well when Bucky smiled, Tony still felt that little stutter in his heart, but he was handling.

And Bucky’s letter would remain hidden until he died, anyways. So that was that.

 

 

It would be just Tony’s luck that everything would go to shit right before he was about to fucking graduate. Three years of shitty high school experiences, and all he asked for was one damn year when he didn’t have to deal with any more bullshit. The universe, however, seemed to have other plans.


End file.
